Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
Speaker 1: From House Towards dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Christine and this is Molly. All Right, Molly um.
Speaker 1: With all the news about many Mumiras being suspended from
Speaker 1: Major League Baseball for his alleged steroid use, I felt
Speaker 1: like it was time for me to get something off
Speaker 1: my chest. Molly. Yes, I have used steroids many times
Speaker 1: all my life, thank goodness, christ And I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is the for him to admit that, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to, you know, I want to give
Speaker 1: that monkey off my back, you know, because I feel
Speaker 1: roid rage coming on, and uh, I just you know,
Speaker 1: want to want to keep myself under control. Will you
Speaker 1: tell us why you were using steroids? Um? Well, it's
Speaker 1: obviously to build up my hulking physique. True, she is hulking,
Speaker 1: Actually just kidding. I used steroids because I'm horribly allergic
Speaker 1: to poison ivy, and when I was at a kid,
Speaker 1: I would get poison ivy so badly that I would
Speaker 1: have to take steroid pills and use topical steroid creams
Speaker 1: to get rid of it. So if they'd run a
Speaker 1: little blood test on you when you were a little kid,
Speaker 1: they would have thought that you were juicing. Yeah. I probably.
Speaker 1: I probably was the thing. You were a little competitive swimmer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always. I always felt really weird whenever I get
Speaker 1: poison ivy. Once my mom told me that they were
Speaker 1: steroid pills, becausen't I would tell my friends and don't
Speaker 1: come around. I got poison ivy, but I'm taking the roids.
Speaker 1: It'll get rid of them. So anyway, these are obviously
Speaker 1: a different kind of steroid, a medicinal steroid, uh to
Speaker 1: boost up my immune system, not the same thing that
Speaker 1: many ramiros is accused of taking. But I thought that
Speaker 1: it would be, you know, a nice anecdotal intro into
Speaker 1: our discussion on the use of steroids among male and
Speaker 1: female athletes. Yeah, if I can get the image of
Speaker 1: you with poison ivy taking steroids off my it was
Speaker 1: off my brain. It was it was a plague. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine. I sure hope to see pictures, as I'm
Speaker 1: sure all our listeners do. Yeah, but thanks to all
Speaker 1: the steroids, now don't get poison ivy. Yeah, that works. Well.
Speaker 1: The thing that caught our I about Manny Ramirez was
Speaker 1: that the steroid that he has been banned from Major
Speaker 1: League Baseball four is actually a female fertility drug and
Speaker 1: so UH. Like us, the Scientific American people looked at
Speaker 1: this and they were like, WHOA, why would you use
Speaker 1: a female fertility drug, not you know, some of the
Speaker 1: more potent steroids that are out there. So let's talk
Speaker 1: first about Manny and hCG. And I think by h
Speaker 1: c G you mean human choreonic gonadotrop in. Why, yes,
Speaker 1: I do, Yes, this is UH. Ramirez claims that this
Speaker 1: stem from UH is not a steroid, but that he
Speaker 1: was prescribed it for a personal health issue. I think
Speaker 1: that we should say that so UM, but there is
Speaker 1: there are some reasons why Manny might might have been
Speaker 1: taking it kind of related to steroid use, because, like
Speaker 1: you said, there are far more potent forms of antibolic
Speaker 1: steroids that he could have been taken that would have
Speaker 1: really like pumped up his muscle build and his strength
Speaker 1: and all of that. But according to the Scientific American article, UM,
Speaker 1: h c G can hasten the return to normal testicular
Speaker 1: function following prolonged antibolic steroid use, right, so it may
Speaker 1: have been sort of like a counterbalance and maybe things
Speaker 1: he took previously. But the fact of the matter is
Speaker 1: it was banned from use for sports, but it's not
Speaker 1: banned for women because, as we said, it is a
Speaker 1: fertility drug, so if you get pregnant, it might be
Speaker 1: uh in your body naturally. It actually doesn't do that
Speaker 1: much for women because as we said, it doesn't really
Speaker 1: do that much for men in terms of muscle. I mean,
Speaker 1: it does some stuff, but not as much as other things. UM,
Speaker 1: but it's basically present naturally and women that can be
Speaker 1: produced by the placenta during pregnancy. It's used a lot
Speaker 1: during IVF procedures because it helps conception occur and UM.
Speaker 1: Males can also take it for fertility reasons because it
Speaker 1: stimulates the test us to produce testosterone and increases the
Speaker 1: production of sperm. And then there are also people who
Speaker 1: use it for weight loss, but that is not recommended.
Speaker 1: So there are a few reasons why you could have
Speaker 1: hCG in your system, but it's banned for males m
Speaker 1: and only. I think this would be a good time
Speaker 1: to just talk briefly about what anibolic steroids are They
Speaker 1: are chemical substance derived from cholesterol and antibolic steroids, which
Speaker 1: are the ones that we commonly associate with um athletes
Speaker 1: and bodybuilders and things like that are used to build
Speaker 1: up tissues, actually build muscle and bone mass by stimulating
Speaker 1: the muslim bone cells to make new protein. Right, So
Speaker 1: this gives you that super strength that lets you hit
Speaker 1: millions of home runs. And there's an entire cocktail of
Speaker 1: drugs surrounding just anibal steroids, like things like diuretics that
Speaker 1: will reduce your weight gain and other things that will
Speaker 1: mask your drug use. And then you have things that
Speaker 1: will cover the pain and associated with steroid use and
Speaker 1: the intensive training that you're doing, and then uppers and
Speaker 1: downers and things that will build your muscle tone even more. So,
Speaker 1: there's just a whole pharmacy out there that to take
Speaker 1: a lot of drugs. But you know, it's interesting what
Speaker 1: we found out when we're reading about manny is that
Speaker 1: female athletes do not take performance enhancing drugs as much
Speaker 1: as men. Right. The experts say that men take about
Speaker 1: four to five times more steroids than women. Right. I
Speaker 1: mean this is coming directly from the people who are
Speaker 1: doing the drug testing for major League Sports and for
Speaker 1: the Olympics, you know, they just don't see as many
Speaker 1: contaminated specimens from women, which is good, go ladies. But
Speaker 1: the reason that it might be is because it's just
Speaker 1: harder to hide the women when you take steroids. You know,
Speaker 1: there's um effects that might be hard for one to masks,
Speaker 1: such as facial hair, a deepening voice. This one wouldn't
Speaker 1: really be out in the open, but it can really
Speaker 1: affect your menstrual cycle. So you know, you've got to
Speaker 1: take a lot of stuff. Really, if you're a female,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if you could take that much
Speaker 1: to cover up the use of antibox steroids. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is because anabolic steroids are mostly testosterone and other
Speaker 1: derivatives that are giving women these secondary sex characteristics. And
Speaker 1: then for men, they also have physical side effects as well,
Speaker 1: because if you listen to um Molly Mind's UH podcasts
Speaker 1: on male birth control, you know that by adding all
Speaker 1: of this testosterone into the body, it actually triggers the
Speaker 1: brain to shut down test natural testosterone production, and so
Speaker 1: that least more feminine secondary sex characteristics in men, such
Speaker 1: as like the shrinking of the testes or male breast Yes,
Speaker 1: and also in addition baldness, fertility, mood, swains, etcetera. A
Speaker 1: the road rage, roid rage. But you've got to take
Speaker 1: a lot of steroids get to that level, which women
Speaker 1: probably don't get to you because they only need to
Speaker 1: take about a tenth as much of testosterone to get
Speaker 1: the same sort of physical effects. Right. But you know
Speaker 1: what I found interesting, Kristen, was, you know, we got
Speaker 1: a lot of these statistics about female use versus melius
Speaker 1: of steroids from the St. Petersburg Times, and they were
Speaker 1: interviewing people as to why, you know, why women don't
Speaker 1: use these as much as men, because obviously everyone wants
Speaker 1: to be the best at their sport, wants to run
Speaker 1: the fastest, swim the farthest, etcetera. There was some theorizing
Speaker 1: that it was very much a psychological thing, as we
Speaker 1: mentioned the beard, etcetera, that the loss of femininity. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're a female athlete, you already probably have um,
Speaker 1: broader shoulders, you know, more muscular looks than other females.
Speaker 1: So taking something that further develops that is something that
Speaker 1: many females are scared of. It comes down to purely,
Speaker 1: you know, a looks based reason. I don't know if
Speaker 1: i'd buy that, because I think that women are just
Speaker 1: as competitive as and it would want to win just
Speaker 1: as badly. So I don't know if you know being
Speaker 1: pretty is enough of the reason not to take a steroid.
Speaker 1: But that's sort of one of the theories that people
Speaker 1: have about this. Yeah, and I mean not necessarily even
Speaker 1: being pretty, just having the physique of a man is
Speaker 1: going to all suddenly having a male physique is probably
Speaker 1: gonna set off some some alarm bells by athlete regulators.
Speaker 1: So it might be just more do you think that
Speaker 1: it's harder to hide? Um? And there was a comment
Speaker 1: in in the St. Petersburg Times article that you and
Speaker 1: I were looking at about Marian Jones saying that people
Speaker 1: were really surprised that she had been taking steroids because
Speaker 1: you know, she's a very muscular and very lean, but
Speaker 1: she still has a female runner's body. She didn't look
Speaker 1: like some you know, hulk. Yeah, but what's interesting is, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's say that this holds up that women aren't taking
Speaker 1: as mainstairs as men because they want to look good.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, what we found was this really
Speaker 1: disturbing trend that high school girl there's an increase of
Speaker 1: steroid use in high school girls for purely cosmetic reasons.
Speaker 1: And it's going back to those effects of rapid weight
Speaker 1: loss and burning fat and building more muscle because of
Speaker 1: the way testosterone works in our bodies that it actually
Speaker 1: promotes more more muscle growth. You have that the leaner physique,
Speaker 1: and so girls are thinking, hey, this is another fast
Speaker 1: weight loss method that I can use. But it's actually
Speaker 1: very dangerous, especially because it's rising among high school girls
Speaker 1: and it's also reaching down to middle middle school girls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some heartbreaking stories out there if you read them
Speaker 1: about cheerleaders who just wanted the six pack abs and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden they ended up suicidal. They just,
Speaker 1: you know, like you said that, the side effects are awful,
Speaker 1: but these girls are turning to it just for you know,
Speaker 1: wanting to look nice. And there is a study by
Speaker 1: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that estimated that
Speaker 1: five point three percent of teen girls have used steroids
Speaker 1: for cosmetic purposes. And five point three percent that's a
Speaker 1: pretty huge number if we're looking at all American teen girls.
Speaker 1: So it's it's a pretty prevalent problem. It seems like, yes,
Speaker 1: and what's sad about it is that it's often the
Speaker 1: same girls, according to some research, who have eating disorders.
Speaker 1: So it's it's part of sort of a whole suite
Speaker 1: of problems related to body image. And they're saying that
Speaker 1: these girls have very easy access to these steroids because
Speaker 1: you know, they probably know athletes who are using them
Speaker 1: in their high school. They're saying that coaches are giving
Speaker 1: them in some cases, parents are giving them these steroids,
Speaker 1: and they can buy them over the internet. It's not
Speaker 1: that hard. So it's it's a pretty disturbing trend. So
Speaker 1: don't take steroids girls. Yeah, And it's and these are
Speaker 1: also the same The girls who were found to be
Speaker 1: using antibolic steris for cosmetic reasons also had tried other
Speaker 1: very risky forms of weight loss as well, which points to,
Speaker 1: you know, an underlying problem. But in case you a beard,
Speaker 1: the possibility of growing a beard and hulking muscles and
Speaker 1: all of that is not severe acne, and severe acne
Speaker 1: isn't reason enough to stay away from steroids. How about these? Uh.
Speaker 1: The adverse effects of anabolic steroids UM include kidney dysfunction,
Speaker 1: liver tumors, toxic hepatitis, UH, skin becoming more coarse, and
Speaker 1: using antibolic steroids while your growth plates are still open
Speaker 1: can lead to premature closures and not to mention all
Speaker 1: of these cardiovascular risks of heart attacks and sudden death.
Speaker 1: Not good, not good, and um. One of another compelling
Speaker 1: statistic about anabolic steroid use is the fact that about
Speaker 1: people using them share needles, So that also raises the
Speaker 1: possibility of HIV transmission, hepatitis, all of that. So it's
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous thing to to dabble in just so
Speaker 1: you lose a few pounds. So take it from us.
Speaker 1: We've got to reform steroid user right here on the podcast.
Speaker 1: But no more poison ivy. She's off the roids, off
Speaker 1: the roids, so for it. So if you want more
Speaker 1: information about Wrmon's haancing steroids, because I'm sure there's just
Speaker 1: a whole host of other side effects, we might not
Speaker 1: have been begotten to check out how performance enhancing drugs
Speaker 1: work on how stuff works dot com. And this is
Speaker 1: sort of a you know, it was sort of a
Speaker 1: downer of a podcast, Christen, So maybe we should do
Speaker 1: some listener mail. Okay, listener mail, listener mail. What we've
Speaker 1: got in a lot of mail from you guys about
Speaker 1: our podcast on whether or not boys should get the
Speaker 1: gardensil vaccine for HPV. So, Molly, why don't we read
Speaker 1: some of these letters we got? Okay, so we got
Speaker 1: two emails here from Sarah Janelle who pointed out that
Speaker 1: Kristen and I did not do a very good job
Speaker 1: listing all the risks for boys that HPV vaccine could
Speaker 1: help with. Basically, what we sort of alluded to was
Speaker 1: the fact that a boy getting a gardossil vaccine would
Speaker 1: be mainly doing it for our altruistic reasons, maybe some
Speaker 1: prevention of general towards. We did not go into all
Speaker 1: the reasons why boys should get a cervical cancer vaccine
Speaker 1: and while boys can't get cervical cancer, Sarah Janelle both
Speaker 1: did a great job appointing out things like oral cancers
Speaker 1: on the rise. HPV can also cause penile and anal cancer,
Speaker 1: so they were you know, basically three main cancers that
Speaker 1: they both pointed out uh that come as a result
Speaker 1: of being infect with HPV. So thanks Sara and Janelle
Speaker 1: for reminding us all of the delightfully named anal, oral,
Speaker 1: and penile cancers that boys art risk for. And we
Speaker 1: got some cool male from some listeners abroad. Uh. Ellie
Speaker 1: is from Australia, and she wanted to let us know
Speaker 1: what was going on. Uh down Under. I don't believe
Speaker 1: you did that. I did it. I went there. UM
Speaker 1: about gardasil and she said that the for the full
Speaker 1: set of three immunizations was made free for females for
Speaker 1: a while. Um. And the sex factor somehow flew just
Speaker 1: under the radar, because that was one of the big
Speaker 1: things we were talking about, was this whole social stigma
Speaker 1: about whether or not HPV vaccine was going to make
Speaker 1: women more likely to be having rampant sex or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um, it just was very simple that it
Speaker 1: would cut your chances of getting cervical cancer by whatever percentage.
Speaker 1: So Australia seems to have a bit of a better
Speaker 1: handle on it than the United States. And then we
Speaker 1: got a letter from Liz who is a med student
Speaker 1: over in Ireland. She was saying that the HPV vaccination
Speaker 1: is a hot button issue right now because it was
Speaker 1: originally promised by the Minister of Health and was recently
Speaker 1: withdrawn due to cost. Right, they're gonna offer it for free,
Speaker 1: I guess they. And then they yanked it so thanks
Speaker 1: so much for writing in ladies, and if you have
Speaker 1: any questions, comments, or suggestions for me or Molly and
Speaker 1: I would like to put out a special request for
Speaker 1: you guys to send me and Molly the names of
Speaker 1: any books that you guys are reading. And this is
Speaker 1: part of a little research that we're doing for an
Speaker 1: upcoming podcast, So send me and Molly an email of
Speaker 1: what books you reading this summer. Any other questions and
Speaker 1: comments at mom stuff at how stuff Works out um
Speaker 1: and as always, if you want to read more about
Speaker 1: the HPV vaccine, performance enhancing drugs and all the other
Speaker 1: topics in between, please head on over to how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Want
Speaker 1: more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the
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